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Sedition Law

Mr. Stanford said he had risen to offer a resolution, which he wanted to have offered immediately after that which had been offered by the gentleman from Virginia, (Mr. Randolph,) and adopted by the House, on the subject of prosecutions for libel at common law; but not being able to get the floor, he would now beg leave to move his by way of instruction to the same committee. That committee, Mr. S. said, had been charged with an inquiry into what prosecutions for libel at common law had been instituted in the courts of the United States, which he hoped the committee would duly make, and lay before the House. Thus the House would see what system of persecution, if any, had been resorted to, and cherished by the late Administration or its friends, in any part of the United States; and he equally hoped some remedy might be devised at this time, the beginning of a new Administration, to obviate any like occurrence in future. But, said Mr. S., let it not be that any thing be done partially. While we are about to bring to our view all the cases of prosecution for libel under the common law, we are not likely to know any thing about prosecutions for libel which had occurred under the sedition law, and that too under a different Administration. We have not authorized any such inquiry. That abuses have occurred under both, is but too probable, and I think it will be liberal, as it is just and fair, to make the inquiry more general on the subject. If any citizen has been oppressed or injured by such prosecutions, let it be known, and let justice be done him; even now, if with propriety any way can be devised to do so. Inquiry, however, is all that is asked for the present.

It may be perceived, said Mr. S., and if not, I wish it should be understood when I speak of justice being done, that I speak with rather peculiar reference to a gentleman of this House, who has been a principal sufferer under the well-known sedition law. I think it never too late to do justice, under whatever circumstances or motives of policy it may have been withheld for a time. I trust no gentleman will, upon this occasion, suspect me of a design to excite any party feelings. It certainly is not my wish, whatever may be the effect. The resolution I am about to offer is not so framed, nor would it necessarily involve the question of the constitutionality of the law. I feel persuaded, therefore, that the different gentlemen of the House may, from a spirit of liberality and fair concession, indulge the inquiry asked for.

But, sir, said he, since the other inquiry has been gone into, it cannot be unfair to say that the majority of the House owe it to themselves to extend the inquiry, as well to cases of prosecution under the sedition law, as to those under the common law; and I shall be permitted to say also, they owe it as well to the feelings and sufferings of the gentleman to whom I have alluded. Whatever may be the aspect of political opinions and parties now, it is known to you, sir, and a few others on this floor, that to him much is due for the present ascendency of the majority; perhaps to no one more, to the extent of his sphere of action and influence. In the famous contested election for President in this House, eight or nine years ago, he gave the vote of a State, which sufficed to decide the contest; and more especially so, if the blank votes of the State of Maryland could have rendered that vote doubtful. But, however such considerations may or may not avail, nothing is more clear to me than that the inquiry should be indulged on the most liberal principles.

Resolved, That the committee, appointed to inquire into what prosecutions for libels at common law have been instituted before the courts of the United States, be instructed to inquire what prosecutions for libels have been instituted before the courts of the United States under the second section of the act entitled "An act in addition to an act, entitled 'An act for the punishment of certain crimes against the United States,'" passed the 14th day of July, 1798, and the expediency of remunerating the sufferers under such prosecutions.

Mr. Sawyer moved to amend the resolution by adding, at the end of it, the words "and that the committee also inquire whether any and what private compensation has been made to such suffering persons."

Mr. Macon said he did not know how the committee could go about to make such an inquiry as that contemplated by the amendment. The gentleman must be well satisfied that the Government could not rightfully inquire into transactions between individuals.

Mr. Dana said that he had no particular objection to meet this inquiry. As to the disclosure of facts as to the reimbursement by individual contribution, it might be amusing, if this House had authority to make it. He said he should like to know who contributed to the relief of James Thompson Callender, when he was prosecuted; but he had some doubt whether it was proper to enter into any inquiry or whether it was proper to pass the resolution pointing to the remuneration of sufferers under the sedition law. He should have supposed that it might be proper to leave it at large for the committee to report. He said he had certainly no objection to inquire, though he conceived that prosecutions at common law and under the sedition law were essentially different; because, supposing the Congress of the United States to pass such a law, the courts of the United States might take cognizance of it; but, without such a law, it did not belong to the judiciary to extend its care to the protection of the Government from slander. Such was the decision of Judge Chase, (said Mr. D.,) who decided that the court had no jurisdiction at common law in suits for libel; and the Supreme Court of the United States never did decide the question. The strong contrast is this: that while there was a description of men who said that no prosecution could be had at common law for libel, nor under the statute which modified the common law so as to allow the truth to be given in evidence – who, while they excited indignation against this statute, should afterwards undertake to institute prosecutions at common law where there was no limitation in favor of the defendant. There is this difference in the cases: that we find practice precisely different from professions. I do not say that the heads of departments were instrumental in instituting these prosecutions; but it marks some of the subordinate men who were active in making professions. I am very willing that the proposed inquiry should be made; but I cannot see the propriety of our undertaking to give any opinion as to remunerating those who suffered.

Mr. Stanford said: – Mr. Speaker, I would ask if my colleague's motion of amendment can be in order? It is no concern of this House, or of the Government, what private contributions may have been made to the gentleman from Kentucky; and, if it was, the inquiry is impossible. [The Speaker said, not being able to enter into the views of the mover of the amendment, he considered the motion in order.] Then, said Mr. S., if my colleague is anxious to know what he could not otherwise know, I will tell him I had contributed a small sum to the gentleman from Kentucky, as a sufferer in what was then considered a common cause; but, upon his return to his seat in the House, he could not brook the idea of such a contribution, and returned the amount to myself I know, and to others I believe. My colleague would do well to tell us how much he contributed. It was well known contributions were made in a quarter not far from him; and if he did not, I am well persuaded it was not for the want of sympathy on his part, or extreme zeal in the democratic cause; for I am confident I have seen as much or more seditious matter from under his pen, than I ever saw from under that of the gentleman from Kentucky. Be that, however, as it may, I am for one willing, if no constitutional difficulty can be shown, to remunerate the sufferers – at least to take such money out of the treasury, and restore it to its original, rightful owners; and if it cannot be consistently done, why the inquiry can do no harm. But, indeed, we have great examples in the case before us. Did not the late President, when he came into place, refuse to let such money come into the treasury in the case of the worthless Callender? As the proper authority, he thrust it from him as unworthy the coffers of his country; and did not his doing so meet general approbation? I confess it met mine most cordially, and I believe it did that of my colleague also. Have we not, moreover, the best recorded proof that the present President holds similar opinions on this subject? His splendid opposition to the sedition law is the proof to which I allude, and is, in my mind, conclusive on this subject. But if it were not, where is the impropriety of an inquiry? The House will be better able to decide when the whole matter shall come fairly before them.

Mr. Quincy said this appeared to be a proposition to aid a single individual; and, by the amendment, gentlemen who had aided that individual were anxious to prevent him from gaining more than he had paid. It was a kind of application to the House to repay to those persons who relieved the sufferers under the sedition act, the sums which they had paid. If this were the object, Mr. Q. suggested whether it would not be proper for them to come forward and lay their claim in the ordinary form before the House.

Mr. Sawyer said he was, as he always had been, willing to contribute his mite to the relief of the sufferers; but he did not wish to see them remunerated from the public treasury.

Mr. Lyon. – I have for some time been in suspense whether I ought, or ought not to make any observations on the subject before the House; delicacy on the one hand bids me be silent, while a duty I owe to myself, to my family, and to the nation, requires (that since my particular case has been alluded to) the members of this House and the public should be made acquainted with many of the circumstances of that case, which have either never come to their knowledge, or have long been buried up among the consumed heap of political occurrences, disputations and publications of these days. Besides, sir, I have it in my power to throw much light on the subject of the inquiry wished for, by the gentleman from North Carolina, (Mr. Sawyer,) who has proposed the amendment under consideration, and I will assure the gentleman that I shall not be backward in doing so. It is true, sir, that I was unjustly condemned to pay a fine of one thousand dollars and to suffer an ignominious imprisonment of four months in a loathsome dungeon – the common receptacle of felons, runaway negroes, or the vilest malefactors – and this when I was the Representative of the people of Vermont in this House of Congress. It cannot be said there was no other room in the prison, there were rooms enough; yes, sir, one of my judges during my imprisonment, found another room in the same jail to be imprisoned for debt in, until he gave bonds for the liberty of the yard. To heighten the picture exhibited by official tyranny, and to add to the cruel vexation of this transaction, I was carried out of the county in which I lived, fifty miles from my family, kept six weeks without fire in the months of October and November, nearly the whole of which time the northwest wind had free admittance into the dungeon, through the same aperture that admitted the light of heaven into that dreary cell. And let it be asked, in these days of the mild reign of republicanism, for what crime was all this extraordinary, this ignominious punishment inflicted?

I hold a copy of the indictment in my hand, which includes the charge against me. I will not trouble the House with a recital of the technical jargon and tedious repetition of words, of course, which constitute the bulk of such instruments. No, sir, but I will read the identical words of the charge, which says, that on the 20th of June, 1798, Matthew Lyon wrote a letter to Alden Spooner of Windsor, Vermont, in which he said, "as to the Executive, when I shall see the efforts of that power bent on the promotion of the comfort, the happiness, and accommodation of the people, that Executive shall have my zealous and uniform support. But whenever I shall, on the part of the Executive, see every consideration of the public welfare swallowed up in a continual grasp for power, in an unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation, and selfish avarice – when I shall behold men of real merit daily turned out of office for no other cause but independence of sentiment – when I shall see men of firmness, merit, years, abilities, and experience, discarded in their application for offices for fear they possess that independence; and men of meanness preferred for the ease with which they take up and advocate opinions the consequence of which they know but little of – when I shall see the sacred name of religion employed as a state engine to make mankind hate and persecute one another, I shall not be their humble advocate."

This is the whole of my crime, and what do those words amount to. Who is here that hears these words, but what approves the sentiment they contain? What do I say in these words, other, or more, or less, than that when the Executive is doing right, I will support him – when doing wrong I will not be his humble advocate? This ought to be the creed of every member who enters these walls. Was there to be an oath or abjuration added to the constitutional oath to be taken by the members of this House, can any person who hears me, devise a better, or one more proper? Could any person who really thought Mr. Adams quite clear from all those improprieties, as merely possible from the nature of man, mentioned in my letter, have thought of my libelling the President by this declaration? I presume not, sir. Yet this, my crime, received one of the condemnations which you are called upon by this motion to constitute an inquiry into – an inquiry I cannot persuade myself will be refused. The letter, sir, was an answer to a violent invective against me, published in the same paper a short time before, in which besides a number of other charges against me, it was imputed to me as a crime that I acted in opposition to the Executive.

I did not begin the altercation. A person who was a friend to the Adams Administration, in the act of libelling me, (one of the constituted authorities,) ushered the Executive into his performance. My character, ever dearer to me than life, was concerned. I deigned to answer him, after expostulating with him on my right as one of the constituted authorities of the nation to exercise my own judgment in my official conduct, and showing that my merely differing with the Executive proved no more than that the Executive differed with me. I incidentally proceeded in the words for which I was indicted, the very words I just now read. I was charged with neither more nor less as coming from my pen. As if to outrage every principle of law and every sentiment of decency and propriety, this indictment, founded on the sedition law passed on the 14th day of July, 1798, charges me with having in Philadelphia on the 20th of June prior, written a letter to Alden Spooner of Vermont, which contained those words I have been reciting. My letter was produced in court and carried the Philadelphia post-mark of some day in the same June, I do not recollect which day; Judge Patterson himself admitted this fact, and that it was out of my power and control in the June before the sedition law was passed. Thus the indictment, which was the foundation of the barbarous treatment I received, carried on its front its own condemnation; but this defect was remedied by the ingenuity of the party judge, who dexterously mingled his assertions that the crime was cognizable under the common law, with his admonitions to a pliant jury not to be deterred from finding a verdict where the man who wrote was a member of Congress, and knew the sedition law was about to be passed, and probably hurried his letter to evade the law.

It may be said, sir, that I was charged in the indictment with publishing a copy of a letter, from an American diplomatic character in France, to a member of Congress, commonly called the Barlow letter. I was so, and there was a third count in the indictment for aiding and abetting in the publication of said letter. The words selected as seditious were as follow: "The misunderstanding between the two governments has become extremely alarming: confidence is completely destroyed; mistrust, jealousy, and a wrong attribution of motives, are so apparent as to require the utmost caution in every word and action that are to come from your Executive; I mean if your object is to avoid hostilities. Had this truth been understood with you before the recall of Monroe, before the coming and the second coming of Pinkney, had it guided the pens that wrote the bullying speech of your President, and the stupid answer of your Senate, in November last, I should probably have had no occasion to address you this letter; but when we found him borrowing the language of Edmund Burke, and telling the world that although he should succeed in treating with the French, there was no dependence to be placed on their engagements; that their religion or morality was at an end, and they had turned pirates and plunderers; and it would be necessary to be perpetually armed against them, though you were at peace, we wondered that the answer of both Houses had not been an order to send him to a madhouse! Instead of this, the Senate have echoed his speech with more servility than ever George the Third experienced from either house of Parliament." No proof appeared on the trial of my printing, or aiding or abetting in printing, or circulating a printed copy of this famous letter. I had read the copy of the letter in company, but the advocates of the sedition law would never admit that such reading was punishable by that law. The printer who printed the letter, swore that he had been anxious to get the letter from me, and that I had refused to suffer it to be printed, and repelled every attempt to persuade me to the printing; that he had obtained the copy of the letter in my absence. The fact was, that my wife was persuaded by a gentleman who is now a member of this House, that the Republican cause and my election (which was pending) would be injured if the letter was not published; and, as I understood, she gave it to him, the letter was printed, and that gentleman had some of the copies before I came home. I suppressed the remainder of the edition. The judge, finding no proof to support this part of the charge, directed the jury to find a verdict of guilty generally, as there could be no doubt of my being guilty on the first count. I had acknowledged my having written the letter to Alden Spooner. They did so. I will not detain the House by going into a detail of the manner in which that jury was packed. After all the care and management in the original selection, there was one man on it whose honesty my persecutors feared; and, to get him off, a wretch falsely swore that the summoned juryman had expressed to him something like an opinion that I could not be found guilty. I will not here dwell upon the judge's denial to me of a challenge upon the jury – as great a crime as any Judge Chase was charged with. I look for an investigation of this business when all the features of it shall come fairly to public view. Should that investigation be refused at this time, I shall not fail to look for it at some future time. I can never forgive the unjust stigma that has been placed on my character; and should justice be refused me during my whole life, I will leave it with my children and theirs to seek it. When my enemies wounded my feelings, robbed me of my property, and affected temporarily my reputation, I consoled myself that my friends would soon be in power, and they would make every thing right. My wounded honor would be consoled; the wound would be healed – a share at least of the property of which I had been deprived, would be reimbursed. How cruelly have I been thus far disappointed! Generous men, at the time I suffered, said it is enough for you to bear the mortification of the temporary insult – we will share with you the loss of property. Under this impression much money was collected, the greater part of which went to relieve oppressed Republican printers – it has all been charged to me. I never asked, nor would I have received a cent of this gratuity, could I have avoided it without insulting the benevolent views of the good man (Gen. Stevens Thompson Mason, deceased) who set the subscription on foot. That good man gave me a list of those to whom he considered me beholden, and the amount; while the thing was fresh in every one's mind I made a compliment, which he considered ample, and more than ample, to every one of those on that list that was within my reach; to those few that remain on that list uncompensated, I feel beholden and much indebted. As the thing has grown old, and as I have come in contact with those gentlemen, I have felt myself in an embarrassed, awkward situation, from which I wished to be relieved by being able to say to them, the public have restored your money – here it is – it is yours, not mine. Judging other men to have feelings like myself, I am at a loss how to get rid of the obligation I feel, in any other way than the restoration of their money when it comes in a way they cannot refuse it. From this source my anxiety for the restoration of the money unjustly taken from me, arises more than any other; and on every review of the subject, I am bound to say that I have been more cruelly treated by the neglect of a duty to which my friends had pledged themselves, when they declared me innocent and patriotic, than by enemies who thought me guilty, and found me goading them in their progress toward the destruction of the liberty and republicanism of this country. As if to make their cruelty more insupportable, insult is added to the injury, by daily insinuations that I am bound by gratitude to stand by those who call themselves Republicans, in all their projects, right or wrong. Before I was elected a member of Congress from the State of Kentucky, I sent to a member of this House, who had promised me to bring it forward, a petition to be laid before the House of Representatives for redress in this case. He returned the petition to my son in a letter, which I have in my hand – in which he says, "I am sorry and ashamed that I have not presented the petition. I have not wrote to your father, and confess I am ashamed; pray you, the first time you write to Colonel Lyon, do endeavor to make an excuse for me." Such I believe was the impression of most of those I had acted with in the reign of terror, as we called it; but that impression has been wearing off, it seems, while my feelings have been every day increasing in their poignancy at their neglect of a duty, to which they had solemnly pledged themselves, while they were struggling with their adversaries for pre-eminence and power. Happily the awful silence which surrounded this extraordinary business has been broken. I consider this a prelude to investigation and a correct issue; and, let the event of the vote now about to be taken be what it may, I shall not despair.

I shall at this time say no more on this subject than to declare I wish not to have my case singled out for reparation. I wish the investigation general; the provision for remuneration general, to all who suffered under the lash of that unconstitutional sedition law.

Mr. Sawyer's amendment was negatived without a division.

Mr. Ross rose to propose another amendment to the resolution. It was a fact, he said, well known in almost every part of the United States, that the people in the district from which he had just been returned, had suffered as much in the cause of democracy as that of any other; that they had presented as firm a barrier to Federal oppression, and perhaps had as just claims as any other people in the United States to remuneration for losses in the cause. It was well known that at the time that high-handed measures were taken in this country, an insurrection had taken place in Pennsylvania, commonly known by the name of the Hot-water Insurrection; that it occurred in consequence of the oppression of the law for the collection of a direct tax. Many persons who had opposed the law, under the idea of its being unconstitutional, were prosecuted, punished, and some of them, in consequence of those prosecutions and the sentence resulting from them, expired in prison. To some who remained after the aspect of the affairs of the country was changed, mercy was extended by the United States; but to those whose prosecutions and convictions were of an earlier date, lenity was not extended; they were compelled to pay their fines before they could be relieved from imprisonment. Mr. R. declared his object in rising to be, to move to amend the resolution in such a way as to instruct the committee to inquire whether any, and if any, what compensation and remuneration should be made to the persons who suffered and were punished in consequence of an act to lay and collect a direct tax in the United States.

Mr. Dana said the gentleman's amendment contemplated remunerating those who suffered by their opposition to a statute. He would propose an amendment to inquire into the propriety of remunerating those who had suffered by their submission (not by their opposition) to the several acts respecting the embargo, certainly so much more meritorious conduct than that of opposition. As respected the whole of this subject, he said he was very free to declare that as regarded those who had been prosecuted at common law in the State of Connecticut, who had certainly been at very considerable expense, their defence perhaps having cost them several thousand dollars, yet, on the principle of correct legislation, he had not the least idea of remunerating them. Where shall we stop, said Mr. D., if we tread back on the steps of each other? We shall have opportunity enough for censure in reviewing our conduct. Perhaps it might be as well to draw the veil of oblivion over past transactions, and learn from experience to err no more.

Mr. Johnson said, that however much the act laying a direct tax was disapproved, and arose from measures which were improper, yet he had never deemed it an unconstitutional law, as he had the sedition law. He should therefore vote against the amendment and for the resolution.

Mr. Gardenier suggested to the gentleman from Pennsylvania, since he had brought the subject before the House, the propriety of going the whole length of his principle. To my mind it is very clear, said he, that if those who oppose the law are to be remunerated, for what it cost them in consequence of prosecution, you must go only on the principle that the direct tax never ought to have been laid at all. If the law was right, it was improper to oppose it. If it was improper, perhaps according to modern democracy, it might be proper to oppose it by force. That, to my mind, is a very dangerous doctrine for legislators to broach; it is a doctrine to which I myself can never agree, for it is making Government a nullity. The suggestion which I wish to make is this: that if those men who suffered in the Hot-water Insurrection are to be remunerated, it is no more than fair that those should be remunerated who have quietly paid this tax. They were at least respectful to the laws. The committee therefore ought to be instructed to inquire into the propriety of repaying to the several contributors in the various States the direct tax, collected from them, unless there be something so admirable, so lovely, so worthy of encouragement in insurrection, that those concerned in it have peculiar claims to encouragement by Government. If that be the case, the gentleman stopped at the proper point. If there was nothing in insurrection, however, which the Legislature would feel it proper to cherish, the gentleman should either go the whole length of his principle or not touch it at all.

Mr. Ross said he had not undertaken to state any principle at all. His object was to refer the subject to a committee to decide upon. He had not said that he considered the original resolution to contain a correct principle; it was a point left for the committee to consider and for the House to determine on. But if it was a correct principle that those who suffered under the sedition law should be remunerated, he said he had no hesitation in saying that his constituents, who had suffered as materially and as much as any for the democratic interest in this country, should be placed on the same ground as those who were asking for the favor of the House for no better reason; and when the gentleman calls upon me, said Mr. R., to go the whole length of a principle which he states, it is calling upon me to do that which is consequent on a principle which I have not assumed. The gentleman from Kentucky conceives that there is a difference between the cases alluded to in my amendment and the cases arising under the sedition law. Where is the difference, sir? In both cases they were laws of the United States: in both cases the judges of the courts of the United States were authorized to proceed. In neither of the cases did they decide the law unconstitutional. If, then, persons were punished by the sedition law in its full operation, carried into effect by the constituted authorities, where, I ask, is the distinction between that and any other law? To all the purposes of legality, that law is as much legal as that under which the direct tax was instituted. Whether the law under which a direct tax was collected, was constitutional or not, has it not as equally received the disapprobation of the Republicans of the United States as the sedition law? If then it was the object of the democratic party to rid the country of such a law as much as of the sedition law, I ask whether those who suffered under each law have not equal claims? There can be no legal claim upon the House under either law; but we know that it was the hardy yeomanry who presented a firm phalanx to the irresistible torrent of injurious laws of the Federal Administration, and who gave the present party the ascendency, and many of them have not, as the gentleman from Kentucky has been, compensated for their suffering by a long continuance in an honorable and lucrative office which he enjoys by the confidence of his constituents.

Mr. Potter declared himself at a loss to know whether the House was sitting here as a branch of the Legislature to pass laws, or as a body to remunerate those concerned in the violation of them. The House sit here to make laws and not to encourage those who resisted them; but if they determined to give premiums for the violations of laws, they had better depart home at once.

Mr. Rhea wished the House to get rid of this motion and the amendment as speedily as possible. If the House were to go on as it had commenced the session, the whole time of the House would be spent about nothing, discussing propositions which could not possibly produce good to the nation. He therefore moved to postpone the whole subject indefinitely.

Mr. Macon said he had been in hopes when this motion had been made, that it would be one of the happy days of the House; that the question proposed would occupy the whole day in debate, and that all would agree in it at last. As to comparing this case with that of the direct tax, it was notorious that the discussion on the sedition law and the public opinion also took a very different turn from that which it took on any other law. The whole discussion (said Mr. M.) as well as I recollect, turned upon the constitutionality of the law. Then, if it is still believed that the law was unconstitutional, I leave it to gentlemen to say whether it can be viewed in the same light as a law, the constitutionality of which is not disputed. In the one case, trials took place for speaking and writing; in the other case for opposing the execution of a law. I wish this question to be settled for this reason: In all governments where liberty and freedom have existed, parties also have had existence. Thinking honestly produces parties. That those gentlemen who were in power when the sedition law was passed, should step a little too far, was not so much to be wondered at as that those who came after them should do so; because they were making the first experiment of the instrument. I then believed, and do still believe, that the law was unconstitutional. Taking up this question, the original resolution of my colleague is that remuneration should be made to those people who suffered under it; but seeing that the question with respect to the constitutionality of the law had always been matter of dispute, it proposes that a committee shall inquire into the subject. The House is no farther committed by passing this resolution, than to consent to the inquiry being made. I submit it to the candor and reflection of gentlemen of all parties, whether this thing, in a national point of view, can produce any evil – on the contrary, may it not produce good? All that has been said about the direct tax laws can have no other effect than to draw off the attention of the House from the true question before them. The question on this law, in my mind, is a different one from any other law which has been passed. I feel no hesitation in acknowledging that it is my opinion that all the sufferers ought to be remunerated, both those who suffered under the sedition law, and those who suffered under the common law. It is the business of all parties to settle amicably as they can any subject of contention between persons of different political persuasions. If this first resolution should be referred to a committee, and they report that the law was unconstitutional, I will venture to pronounce that no majority will ever again make a law of that kind. If, sir, the sufferers under the sedition law did suffer contrary to the constitution, ought not their expenses to be reimbursed? On the subject of contribution, I know that that party to which I was attached, did contribute, and did consider it an honorable cause. I was willing (and there are gentlemen in this House who know it) to open my purse when a man of a very different political creed from myself, Peter Porcupine, was oppressed. I care not of what party a man be, that is oppressed. I can prove that the party opposed to me in politics have also subscribed. It is all no more than the subscriptions for printing speeches which are occasionally made in the House, in which gentlemen of all parties unite. Suppose that the whole fine in any particular case had been paid by individual subscription, what has the Government to do with that? Will it be contended, because an old soldier who received a pension also received individual contributions, that the pension should be taken from him, or that the Government is thereby acquitted of what it owed him? Surely not; the Government has nothing to do with transactions between individuals. As to the particular gentleman brought into this discussion, I believe that every man that contributed any thing towards paying the fine levied on him, was remunerated to his satisfaction. I have thought proper to state these opinions of mine, and to avow myself in favor of reimbursing the sufferers. But before I sit down, I must say that my opinion of modern democracy is very different from that of the gentleman from New York. I consider it as neither leading to insurrection, rebellion, nor any such thing. I believe that the true principle of every modern democrat, is, that the law constitutionally made is supreme, and is to be obeyed; that it has nothing to do with riots, rebellion, and insurrection. I know very well, and shall not deny it, that there are times when insurrection is a holy thing, but it is not peculiarly attributable to democracy. With us, election puts every thing to rights; and on them every man of pure democratic principles depends. It is doubtful whether the question of the constitutionality of the sedition law can be settled in a more easy way, and in a mode less liable to irritation, than that proposed by my colleague. If the committee report as I wish, it is well; if not, it settles the question forever; and it is surely desirable that the question should be settled. However gentlemen may differ, as to the principle proposed to be investigated, they might with propriety vote for the inquiry, as it is the ordinary course of every day. I do not consider this as proposing to give a premium to violators of the laws. I know that much depends in this world on names; and that if you give any man or thing a bad name, whether merited or not, it is difficult to get rid of it. I hope the House will not be deterred from this inquiry by any name attempted to be given to it. It is proper that this question should be settled; and if considered now, it will be settled by a body which did not partake of the heats of those times, and when, to say the least of it, there is a little division in the great parties of the nation; and it seems to me that the gentleman who moved it has been fortunate in the selection of his time. Eight years have elapsed, a new President is just inducted, and the question is now brought up for our decision. I am sorry that any member of this House should make a motion with no other view but for procrastination. I do not believe that my colleague who made this motion is more in the habit of procrastinating the public business than other members of the House; and I was in hopes that there would have been no dissentient voice to his motion. He only asks of you to let the inquiry be made. He does not ask a single member of the House to commit himself upon the question, but merely asks that a committee may be permitted to inquire into it; and this, it seems to me, is no extraordinary request. I hope that the resolution, without being trammelled with any extraneous matter, will be passed.

Mr. Key said he should vote for indefinite postponement of the resolution. What good purpose could its adoption answer, unless the House had the power to take money from the Treasury of the United States for the purpose of remunerating any person who had suffered? Had Congress that power? He apprehended not. He could see no such power amongst those delegated to Congress. The gentleman from North Carolina admitted the House were under no obligation to remunerate the sufferers; and if the gentleman would turn to the rules laid down for the definition of the powers of Congress, he would see that there was no authority to draw money from the Treasury for this purpose. Under that view of the constitution, Mr. K. said he must vote for indefinite postponement.

Mr. Macon asked under what clause of the constitution Captain Murray and others had been remunerated? Under what clause money paid into the Treasury had been returned in various instances? The right to take, gave the right to return that which was taken. In many instances this principle had been practised on. There was no law to authorize the punishment of a man for robbing the mail; but it was derived from the power of establishing post roads. The power of refunding money was one which had been often exercised.

Mr. Gardenier was in favor of an inquiry. It was not only proper that an inquiry should be made, but it was the bounden duty of the House to make it. A member of the House in his place had stated facts which if true undoubtedly entitled him to their interference. Our duty (said Mr. G.) is imperative. The case of the gentleman does not rest upon the question whether the sedition law was constitutional or unconstitutional, but upon the fact that he was not a proper object for the exercise of that law. For, if the statement made be correct, he was punished for uttering a creed which would not be improper for every member of the House; and I will say that subsequent events have shown the sincerity with which the gentleman did make it; that he had kept his promise most religiously; that it was not applicable to those men, or that time, any more than to the present, but was a creed on which he practised before and ever since, so far as his political course is known to me. It is a case in which the privileges of the members of this House are materially concerned. If under the sedition law for a letter written by a member of this House to his constituents, giving his view of public measures, he has been punished, it concerns the safety of this House that complete and perfect remuneration should be made. It is as important that every member should be permitted to speak freely to his constituents, as that he should without restraint address the Chair of the House. It was a case, therefore, which never ought to have been the subject of a judicial investigation, much less considered as a crime. The gentleman at the time followed the dictates of his conscience. To his conscience and his God alone should he be responsible. Sir, should we refuse an inquiry into this case, when we know that the fine of James Thompson Callender, for one of the most atrocious libels ever written in the United States, was remitted? When we know that it was remitted by the President of the United States, after the money had been received by the proper receiving officer of the United States, when it had passed out of the hands of James Thompson Callender into the hands of the officer of Government, and was, to all intents and purposes, in the Treasury of the United States, because there is no such thing as a treasury in which money is actually deposited – for a libel, too, in which the great Father of his Country was treated with a shameless indignity, which could not but have gone to the heart of every man? When the President of the United States was in that libel called a hoary-headed incendiary, should that fine be returned, and shall a gentleman in this House be fined and imprisoned for that which was not even improper? Shall we not restore to him that which others have been suffered to retain, and for which we have not brought to question him who restored it after it was in possession of the receiving officer of the United States – in fact, after it was in the Treasury? Let us not be guilty of this inconsistency. If the sedition law has gone to the tomb of the Capulets, and I believe it has, I am not one who wishes to bear up against the people's voice; the Government is theirs, and when they speak we obey. If under that law the Government has received money for an act which really, if the statement of the gentleman be true, could scarcely be considered an offence within the purview of that law, will you not give it back to him? Either give back the money in the case, or take measures to recover that money which was given back in the other. I am not for making fish of one and flesh of another. Whilst on this subject I will declare that I never did consider the sedition law as unconstitutional. Congress were competent to pass it. But, that parties will sometimes in the ardor of their course exceed the limits of discretion, and do violence to the milder feeling of the community in which they live, has been proved in the Adams Administration, and in that which has lately disappeared; and when they have cooled down, it is but rendering justice to the sense of the country to acknowledge their errors. No, sir, I am satisfied that all prosecutions for libels on the Government should be at least very hesitatingly sustained. You cannot draw a precise line by which you shall limit the right of investigation. The two things are so blended together that you cannot separate them. You must either make the Government supreme or the people supreme. I am for the latter. As Dr. Johnson makes Lord Chesterfield say, liberty and licentiousness are blended like the colors in the rainbow; it is impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. Licentiousness is a speck on the eye of the political body, which you can never touch without injuring the eye itself. I hope and trust that with this investigation will be connected an inquiry into the prosecutions at common law in Connecticut. I have seen in the State of New York, but not under the present Administration, a defendant coming into court, begging only to be permitted to prove that what he had said was true; I have seen also an Attorney-General rise to prevent it: I have seen the truth smothered on the trial by men who were as clamorous against the sedition law as any loud-mouthed patriot in the country. I have seen them bringing almost to the block the victim who may only wish to prove the truth of what he said – which was denied him. I mention this to show that where parties are contending against each other, where there is a majority on one hand and a minority on the other, that which appears on paper proper for the protection of the Government, turns out to be for the oppression of the minority. In the nature of parties it cannot be otherwise. Therefore, in my opinion, the Government of the United States cannot render a greater service than by declaring it will not be accessary to any diminution of the rights of the citizen; that free investigation shall in all cases be permitted. Mr. G. made some further observations on the particular case of Mr. Lyon, and concluded by expressing his hope that the resolution would pass.

The question that the resolution be postponed indefinitely, was decided by yeas and nays – yeas 69, nays 50.